Why Do I Need a Learning Management System?

I was recently contacted by a human resources manager who, thanks to a law firm acquisition, is now also serving as her firm’s technology training manager. This woman was doing her best to take on her new role with gusto but had quickly realized that she wasn’t able to manage each person’s training needs with the tools at her disposal.

She called and asked, “Why do I need a learning management system?”

First of all, I love her openness to learning about new tech! That’s what our industry needs today! (Hello, ABA Model Rule 1.1.)

So, we had a long discussion about how she was currently trying to manage her training program and the ways that an LMS could help her. Here are a few of the topics we discussed…

Stop Managing Your Law Firm Training with Excel

This HR manager, let’s call her Susan, was trying to manage all of her training efforts through Excel and other MS Office programs, but she was starting to go batty. Her Excel folder consisted of a column with every attorney and staff person’s name, with learning content areas across a very long row at the top. She was trying to track the learning everyone accomplished by putting dates or needs in the corresponding cells next to the learner’s name.

Then, she had learning files saved in Word, PDF, PPT and other formats in her computer, trying to email them to people who needed them. She had even stored some in the firm’s network so that people could access what they needed, but she still had to tell them which files, where they were, and then touch base again to see if they actually accessed and studied the files. (Honor system learning is not all that effective, sadly.)

Clearly, this “system” is unsustainable on so many levels, as Susan was quickly realizing. Every person in her law firm (and likely yours) is at a different level of tech competency. She had no way to individually assess every person’s skill level, assign appropriate course work, monitor participation and test improvements.

And let’s face it, our clients are increasingly demanding PROOF that we are holding our firm’s employees to learning and achievement standards when it comes to tech competency. When the rubber hits the road, this HR manager had no documentable way to help the marketing department respond to RFPs that demand proof of learning achievements.

Why an LMS is the Perfect Learning Tool for Law Firms

Upon hearing this woman’s struggles to manage her new responsibilities, and her desire to do it more efficiently, we began discussing the many ways that a learning management system could make her life a whole heck of a lot better… and provide the proof of learning achievements that clients need.

I explained to her that a learning management system can:

Store all learning content in one easily accessible place

Test each employee for a learning benchmark at the beginning of their learning process

Based on those results, the HR manager could assign learning paths customized for each learner

Monitor each employee’s participation levels and learning achievements on one user-friendly dashboard

Create automatic reminders to alert learners that they are behind or ready for a new path

Customize learning content to accommodate a firm’s unique processes

Store, manage and report learning achievements that correlate to the LTA standards, and other certification programs

Further, we talked more about the actual content that she can offer easily through an LMS and it goes way beyond tech skills.

She and the IT team can offer security awareness training through the LMS.

She can offer compliance and soft skills training through the LMS.

She can alleviate the help desk’s workload by enabling them to provide “watch this first” content to people struggling with specific tasks.

How Much Does an LMS Cost?

Of course, our conversation ultimately took us to pricing because she could clearly see the many benefits of an LMS but worried that her firm couldn’t afford it. I had good news for her on that topic, too!

I talked about the robust SavvyAcademy LMS specifically and explained that it is priced by the number of users she wanted to assign (not by the entire size of the firm since not everyone will be a learner). Additionally, it comes with the award-winning SavvySMART Content Library, eliminating her need to shop and pay separately for the learning content she needs.

Then there are all of the tangential savings to the firm: her time is freed up to work on the firm’s other HR needs; the help desk and IT departments spend less time answering questions that they get asked every single day; and tech-savvy employees work more efficiently.

Finally, bottom-line: SavvyAcademy LMS is very affordable when compared to other learning management systems.

She asked for a free demo of our LMS and guess what?! She’s now a happy SavvyAcademy LMS user! If you’d like to discuss your current learning process and how an LMS might make your life easier (with much better learning results, to boot), contact me today. (Jay@SavvyTraining.com, 303-800-4568)

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